The Lost
by GenesisArclite
Summary: After the end of the old world, Caius Ballad gloats at the crystal statue of his defeated rival on the throne. As time begins to pass, however, he slowly comes to see the new nightmare he has created for them all. Pre-LR, oneshot.


_**The Lost**_

The boundaries shattered, time changed form, and Caius Ballad gloated.

His victory was absolute. No one and nothing could have stopped him from accomplishing his goal, so carefully had he manipulated the past to set the future in stone, and now no one could bring back the chaos's overseer, so final had her end been. The curse that had so long bound he and his charge in chains too powerful to break had fallen away, and now, true freedom had become theirs.

From the Shadow of Valhalla, the chaos cracked through time and space and did as it pleased, and he, both living and dead, a paradox of his own – the final and eternal paradox – watched as the grand city of Academia collided with the land of ghosts, the ancient capitol of Valhalla, and darkness fell across the land as great gray clouds came in from the horizons to merge into a blanket of shadow. In the moments that followed, the Shadow of Valhalla was no more, and all of the Yeuls converged in the temple, their whispering black mist surrounding him and shrouding him, though he had no reason to listen at this moment.

As both worlds came into being, he turned, and saw his rival, upon the throne, materializing as the worlds became one.

Unable to resist, he punched his sword into the stone and moved closer.

"How does it feel?" he asked of her, gazing up at eyes now shut tight, her body free of the armor, though her sword lay across her knees. She sat upon a great swath of white feathers. "You failed your mission. Both Etro and your precious sister perished." The smirk that crept onto his lips was his most sincere in centuries. "Now do you see that it would have been better to simply go home, as I asked of you?"

The woman never responded, of course, the ethereal silver light emanating from her crystal and the throne filtering through the facets into the still air.

No sadness, and no bitterness, tinged his smirk this time. He even laughed at her plight. After a lengthy war, it was all over. How did it look out there, now that the world had taken on aspects of both realms? The future was his and Yeul's, and _theirs_ to build as they pleased. Now that eternity had been granted to all, there would be plenty of time to make up for all that had been lost.

Free of his physical body, whenever he wished, he joined the chaos and all of the Yeuls, finally able to be with every one of them as he had wished. Now, people would not be stolen by time. They will live forever, as he had, and never have to bear the pain of those they knew and loved passing on.

And Yeul was free, and could do as she pleased.

He did not leave the temple for a long time, meeting with each of the girls he had lost, pleased that the silent sentinel of Lightning's statue would be forced to witness her failures continue to unfold before her. Not that he really cared. Let her suffer in her nightmares, or have blissful dreams. Nothing of their war mattered. Only this new future, this new eternity, mattered now.

When next he came to the throne room, falling out of the black mist onto the stone, it was to look at her one more time, reveling in the knowledge that _nothing_ could have stopped him and that she knew that now, before he turned and left, moving out of the temple's core through its long and empty hallways, getting rid of all of his memories of bitterness and pain by seeing the joy that come of their suffering.

Here and there, he saw evidence of the war as gouges in the stone and cracked pillars, places where they had thrown each other through walls and floors and across rooms.

It took a long time to get to the temple's entrance – hours, or days, or months – and when he did, he found it cold and dark beneath thick gray clouds.

He stepped outside, and felt a touch of wind against his skin, though it felt a little distant.

"You must stop."

The voice of his charge caused him to hesitate. "Come with me, so that we may see the new world."

"You _must_ stop. We cannot leave this place."

He found this odd, and somehow amusing. Was she too much of a child to understand that, now that her Chaos had infected the entire world, she was free to move about however she wished? "This world is yours." He continued on, seeing a bridge linking two sides of a chasm, replacing the ruined city of the old realm. "You may travel it whenever you wish. You are no longer bound to–"

"My Guardian, you do not understand. I cannot leave, and so, neither can you."

This only bewildered him. "I will not go far."

"You will not go at all."

What happened next startled him, as something tugged on him from behind before suddenly pulling him into the temple, and no matter how he tried, whatever it was had him a grip of iron, and he woke up in the throne room with Lightning's statue still glowing and silent.

When he staggered to his feet, he demanded an explanation.

All he received in response was that the girls could not leave, and so he would not be able to leave either.

* * *

Time passed, and through the chaos, Caius saw the world, seeing the months leave their marks. A year passed, and the chaos eroded away a chunk of the world, leaving blackness behind. Into the void poured waterfalls, and he felt confusion mix with the satisfaction. More time passed, and more of the world eroded away, falling into a Sea of Chaos that chewed away at reality.

Years passed, and he grew restless, leaving the throne room and mapping the labyrinthine halls in the great amount of spare time he had gained.

When again he approached the entrance, this time, something repelled him, painfully, before he could get very close, and knocked him back into the halls, where he landed on his shoulder much too hard. He called out into the Chaos, asking for an explanation of why he could not leave.

"This is where we have existed for a long time. We cannot leave, and we only wish that you remain with us. Please. Do not leave us alone again."

The pain subsided, and his heart softened upon hearing those words. They simply did not wish to be alone, bound to their special Chaos welling up from deep beneath his feet, and could not bear it if he left their side. He could honor their wish and be with them, as he always had, and always would, forever. What would it hurt?

"Then," he said, "I shall remain here with you."

"And we shall be together in the eternity that follows this world's end."

Something cold knotted in the pit of his stomach. "This world's end? What do you mean?"

They seemed reluctant to answer, only whispering his name before falling silent again. When he asked again, they said nothing at all, but he sensed a thick sadness fall across their Chaos, and his soul, before they withdrew.

* * *

More of the world fell into the void, and the icy knot brought by Yeul's simple words of the world's end began to tighten inside him. When next he smirked, long after this world's beginning, it was no longer so pure. Fresh uncertainty brought by the girls whispering worry into his blood as they fawned over him and pleaded with him and adored him cooled his heart, where normally great fires and passion roiled like the surface of the sun.

When he joined the chaos to see what they desired, he found them in pleasant enough moods, content to exist with him to make up for meetings cut short too many times.

Except for one girl, who had lived shortly after the end of the War of Transgression, not content to merely exist with him. She needed to _touch_ him, and she could not in the chaos. No, she had to take on a physical form, though it was thick with black mist, and even then, the touch didn't feel quite real.

More of the world died. Lightning continued to sit on the throne, a constant reminder.

"The chaos has devoured the world. Why can you not leave to see it?"

"The font of Chaos is our home. We always returned to it when we left your side. We have become bound to it, and we would only quicken the end of the world if we ever left here. The people suffer. Snow, the man Serah loved so dearly, suffers in his palace. Noel is out there, his heart darkening. Even Hope is losing control. Rin, the palace guard, can only watch. If we quicken the end, they will all perish before they can be rescued from the darkness that will come before the end."

Caius barely understood, though it was because he didn't want to. "The world is going to end regardless. If you go out there, it will merely end sooner."

"It will die within hours of our most fleeting touch. If we linger, it will shrivel in minutes."

Caius tried not to understand, but did. The Yeuls were poisonous, and there was something in there about people needing to be saved from the chaos before the end came, but_that_ happened sometime in the future. "Who will come to save us from the chaos, and why?"

"A new world will spring from the darkness. Lightning will be the Liberator who will lead them into that future."

Caius stared blankly at her crystal. "A new world, into which Lightning will lead the people."

"She will awaken at the end of eternity during the last days."

For the first time in a long time, he felt a burden lift from his heart. "All of you will be among those she rescues from the darkness. We will be able to live in this new world with the others. This world may end, but at last, we can have true freedom, free from the bonds of eternity."

There was a pause, and then she said, "It is a world that will not welcome us. We must remain behind."

Something froze inside him. "You cannot leave?"

"We must live, always, within the chaos, but it is something we cannot face alone. _You_ must be with us."

* * *

After the next failure to leave his prison, he confronted the crystal statue on the throne, angry enough that he wished he could shatter something that now appearing to be leering at him. He could not save Yeul. She was still trapped, away from a normal life, far from the reality he had wished so dearly for her, unable to be with those she loved, and she would have to remain behind with the chaos when it faded from the world as it ended.

The world was ending, and he could not stop it.

"You knew this would happen! You knew I would not be able to save her! You _must_ have known the future!"

The crystal did not respond, her expression gloating at him.

He tried again to leave, and was repelled, and no matter how he pushed, he could not overpower the Yeuls who held him in chains of chaos, pinning him to this temple that had become his cage. Enraged, tired of watching the world die, tired of living with the knowledge that it _was_ dying, he drove his own sword through his chest and heard the sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing open before falling to the ground.

There was no Heart of Chaos within him now. The only thing keeping him alive was time's immortal state.

But then he woke up in the throne room, very much alive.

"You cannot leave, Caius. You must stay with us, please, we _beg_ of you. We cannot be alone in the darkness."

He tried again, and they dragged him back from the end.

He tried everything he could, every possible manner of escaping the nightmare he had constructed for all of them, and the anger inside became hate.

The world was ending, the girls he loved so dearly continued to suffer, and now _he_ could not even be allowed to die. Soon, he found that _they_ were keeping him alive, calling enough chaos to keep his soul from escaping, dragging him back again and again though they were aware how much pain it caused him.

He lashed out at the crystal on the throne, demanding to know why she had let this happen, why she hadn't stopped him, _why_ she hadn't tried to make him understand.

* * *

In the years leading up to the end, Caius stopped trying to escape, his hatred becoming a tiny black flame that settled in the pit of his heart, where he covered it with razor wire and steel. He could not leave his prison, he could not kill himself, he could not save Yeul from her fate, and he no longer hated the woman on the throne. He could only fall to his knees before her, tell her he wished he could change their fate, and watch over her, making sure nothing disturbed her rest, patiently awaiting the day when she would wake, and come for him.

There was a streak of darkness on her crystal one day, and he touched her for the first time to remove it, but his touch lingered in the crystal facets of her hair, tracing it over her shoulder, imagining that it was her warm skin and not the cold crystal prison he had forced her into.

"Lightning." He said her name often now, whether he wished to or not.

A thousand apologies rose to his lips, every day, and he spoke none of them, because even if she could hear them, he did not deserve to be forgiven.

Of course, he did not deserve to be _touching_ her, either.

"When you come for me – because you will, for it will be your duty," he murmured, "I pray that you will be like the woman I knew and that this will not disturb you. May your visit to this place be brief, and may you never return. All it holds are old and bitter memories of you and I."

The woman never responded, but sometimes he wished, fleetingly, that she could at least hear him in her dreams.

"There are many possible futures, but we can only witness one."

The girls did not always like him spending time here, but since the ones wishing him to remain outnumbered those who wished to let him go, they allowed him these moments of respite through the centuries, no matter how much it stung their hearts to see him with someone else, and more _willingly_ with someone else, for, now that he had gotten his wish and seen the truth, he did not wish to spend his time with those girls.

He will have an eternity to do that, after the world's end.

No, he wanted to spend his time with the woman whose life he had destroyed, wishing he were brave enough to ask for her forgiveness.

* * *

_Just a small, likely AU fic that explores a bit of how Caius might have felt in the five centuries between the end of the old world and the end of the new one. Enjoy!_


End file.
